The Village Effect
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Echos From the Village

Echos From the Village

I can't do It all

Jennifer Jeffcoat
July 15, 2025

We’re told that doing it all is a strength.
That self-sufficiency is sovereignty.
That if we just manage our time better, breathe deeper, and stay organized, we’ll be okay

But what happens when doing it all becomes the very thing unraveling us?

This week, we’re exploring what it means to admit we can’t do it all, and how that admission is not weakness, but the first doorway back to the village.

Wisdom We’re Tuning Into

Podcast Episode: "I Can’t Do It All"
In this raw and unfiltered episode of the Parent Circle Series, Jennifer sits with Laura from Broken Barn Farmstand in Dalton, Idaho. Together they explore the truth so many of us carry: we’re parenting in isolation, overwhelmed, and quietly wondering if we’re the only ones struggling. This episode is an invitation into real conversation and shared humanity. Spotify: Awakened Parent Ashram https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/jennifer0107/episodes/Parenting-Circle-Series-I-cant-do-it-all-e35jjjl

Quote of the Week:
"The moment I said 'I can’t do it all,' was the moment I realized I wasn’t supposed to." -Laura

Article: Reclaiming the Rhythm: How Traditional Villages Raised Children

Before parenting became something done behind closed doors, it was part of a shared rhythm, woven into the everyday life of the village. Children were held by many hands, and parents were never expected to do it all. This article invites us to remember that rhythm and begin weaving it back into our lives. https://ashram-awakened.mn.co/posts/87618538?utm_source=manual

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Parent Circle Gathering in Dalton, Idaho

Laura’s Land-Based Co-op Village at Broken Barn Farmstand
will be hosting the Parent Ashram Tour – Parent Circle Gathering
September 6, 2025 – Dalton, Idaho

This is a full-day gathering for parents including fathers to come together in circle, share stories, release old illusions, and remember what it means to raise children in community, not isolation.

We slow down.
We speak truth.
We eat together.
We move from performance into presence.

This isn’t a workshop.
It’s a homecoming.

Come explore what it means to become a steward of your child’s unfolding, not just a manager of their behavior.

Get your tickets now and find your tribe:
https://www.awakenedparentashram.com/event-details/broken-barn-farm

Laura and family

I Can’t Do It All

It was one of those conversations where time slows.
We sat together at Broken Barn Farmstand, the Idaho breeze moving through the fields, the scent of soil and animals grounding us in the present. Laura, a mother, homesteader, and host of one of our upcoming Parent Ashram Circle gatherings, looked at me and spoke the words that so many parents carry but rarely say aloud:

“I can’t do it all.”

And in that moment, there was no shame.
There was just truth. And truth, when spoken in a safe container, becomes a portal to healing.

Laura’s words echoed a grief I’ve heard from so many mothers and fathers, especially those living close to the land. In returning to rhythm, to food growing from the earth and water collected by hand, there’s a deep remembering. But there’s also a deep undoing. Because in this return to simplicity, we often find that we’ve brought with us the weight of a modern parenting story that was never ours to carry.

This story says: If you were doing it right, it wouldn’t be this hard.
It whispers: Good parents are endlessly patient, constantly regulated, always present.
And it screams: You must meet every need, or you’ll damage your child.

But this isn’t the truth. Its performance.
And it’s killing our capacity for connection.

When Laura shared that she didn’t grow up with models of empathy, I felt the tenderness behind her voice. She is now trying to raise her child with empathy, gentleness, and presence, while carrying the emotional weight of what she never received. This isn’t a parenting failure. This is soul work. This is generational repair. And no one is meant to do that alone.

Village parenting doesn’t erase the hard; it holds it.

It says: “When you are at capacity, I will hold your child in love.”
It says: “When you can’t find your gentleness, I will sit beside you without judgment.”
It says: “You don’t have to perform calm to be worthy of support.”

We are not here to raise perfect children or be perfect parents.
We are here to remember, together, what it feels like to be held while we hold.

Parenting was never meant to be done in isolation.
And when we hold the belief that we should be able to do it all, we create emotional environments of shame, disconnection, and collapse for ourselves and our children.

But when we name our limits, we invite others into our sacred work.
When we say “I can’t do it all,” we don’t fail; we open the circle.

The parenting work we’re doing is holy.
And it becomes more whole when shared.

This is what we’re reclaiming with the Parent Ashram Tour.
This is the medicine of the Parent Circle Series.
And this is the invitation you’re being offered not to do more, but to be seen in your enoughness, even in the midst of your mess.

Because the truth is:
You were never meant to do it all.
You were meant to do it together.

Invitation

If this issue stirred something in you, let it.

Let yourself feel the grief of trying to do it all.
Let yourself soften into the truth that you don’t have to.
And let that be the moment you begin again, not alone, but in circle.

Join us in Dalton, Idaho, or at any stop on the Parent Ashram Tour.
Bring your stories. Bring your overwhelm.
You don’t need to be fixed. You just need to be heard.

There’s a seat for you.